


Mimicry

by Deafdefiler



Category: RWBY
Genre: Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 09:22:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5086444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deafdefiler/pseuds/Deafdefiler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Velvet discovers a new kind of Grimm while on a nighttime walk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mimicry

A bright night. The light from the shattered moon cast a welcoming glow over the forest, and Velvet was happy she had decided to go out for a stroll. There were few clouds in the sky, and since she had left the dorm none had dared come close to the moon. Something in her had demanded a walk, and she felt drawn to the forest where yearly initiations took place; the scenery and ruins were always beautiful, and there was no chance of enough Grimm to worry a training huntress of her caliber. The occasional small Ursa fell to a few simple kicks, and nothing she'd ever seen here had warranted use of her weapon so she had simply stopped bringing it along.

 

She was about an hour into her walk, when she saw her partner Yatsuhashi a few hundred feet away. She smiled, and shook her head; he worried too much, but having his weapon out seemed a bit extreme with no threats around. Then she froze. Something was off, but she couldn't quite place it... "Yatsuhashi?"

 

Her partner jerked at the sound of her voice. His armor shone in the moonlight, somehow paler than usual, as he turned towards Velvet. He 'held' not one, but two bone-white blades, the curved edges merging seamlessly with his forearms, and as he came to face her she could see a hanging jaw and black pits for eyes that seemed to suck all the moonlight into them.

 

This was definitely not her partner.

 

Not wasting any time, Velvet dropped into a fighting stance and dashed forward. The thing also fell into a stance, and Velvet's leaping kick faltered. It wasn't him; it obviously wasn't, but it mimicked his stance so perfectly that she couldn't force herself to go through with the strike. What should've been a bone-shattering sidekick to the neck came out a halfhearted lovetap to the chest.

 

The monster had no such qualms, and a surprisingly swift counterattack raked across Velvet's belly. Her aura took the cut, but there was enough force behind the blow to send her crashing backwards through a nearby sapling. She knew that strike, long hours of practice having etched it into her memory, but it came with an unnatural speed.

 

Velvet lay on the ground, winded and coated in fragments of sapling, when her scroll beeped out one of six warnings she had programmed into it. That single strike had cut her respectable Aura supply almost in half; she took the moment her monstrous opponent seemed to be giving her - Yatsuhashi always gives me a moment after a hit too - to spring to her feet and book it away from her partner's form. Yatsuhashi's long legs left her little chance of escape, and the whistling of air on bone was all the warning Velvet had to duck as she passed between two now-ex trees.

 

Twisting around to face her adversary, Velvet pulled her scroll from its holster, and mentally thanked Coco's drills for how quickly she was able to fire off a distress signal to her team. They'd be able to track her by the device's GPS, but it was up to her to make sure they found more than a few bloodstained cloth fragments. The thing lurched forward with a surprising quickness and an unsettling familiarity, back straight and blade held high before being brought down towards her head in an exact copy of Yatsuhashi's signature strike; she dodged as far to the side as she could and braced herself for the explosion, but it never came. The blade gouged deep into the soft loam, but whatever it was held no aura to make the strike a perfect replica. Velvet leaped forward at the chance, a swift kick lodging the sword's gut hook against a root, then took another blow to the stomach and beat another hasty retreat.

 

If she remembered right, there was an abandoned shack about five minutes' walk away, which meant if she pushed herself she should be able to reach it before the thing caught her trail again. A loud crack reverberated through the woods just as the cottage came into view, followed by the sound of a tree falling over. Velvet scampered inside, closed the door, and put her back to the wall farthest from it so she could keep watch. The pine log shack had no windows, but just enough light seeped in around the door and between the logs that her Faunus heritage allowed her to see the door clearly, so she crouched and waited, wishing her heart would stop trying to jackhammer its way out of her chest.

 

Seconds passed, then turned into minutes of utter silence save the occasional whistle of wind and the blood rushing through her four ears. Velvet checked her scroll, and her pulse spiked again; two strikes, and her aura was in the red. The good news? A few silent words of encouragement from Coco shining brightly against the darkness. 'On our way; don't give up!'

 

Through her sigh of relief, Velvet almost missed the telltale cracking of wood. She threw herself to the side, but just barely quick enough, as a stab that would have skewered her tore through her aura and the stomach of her bodysuit. The wall blew inward, and she turned to run only to find the blade's hook had done its job and caught on her clothing, throwing her off balance. She landed on her back, scroll beeping out a warning she had hoped to never hear: she was completely dry.

 

The monster raised its blades, so perfectly Yatsuhashi yet so obviously not, and let out an unearthly hiss. The blades came down for one final strike -

 

A hailstorm of bullets pounded into the creature from the left, throwing its deathblow to the side and making a sure kill slice off a chunk of Velvet's shoulder spike. It roared, now sounding like any other wounded creature of Grimm, as Coco's barrage continued unrelentingly tearing it apart. Ten seconds later, the beast that had so terrorized Velvet was simply a fading pile of smoking parts.

 

\---

 

Yatsuhashi looked at Coco, a little disturbed. "I'd think shooting something that looked so much like me would be a little harder..."

 

Coco raised an eyebrow. "It threatened my teammate. Go see if she's okay."

 

Threat eliminated, Yatsuhashi rushed towards the cottage. As soon as he rounded the corner of the splintered hole, Velvet screamed and weakly tried to crawl away. "Get away! Get away from me!"

 

"Velvet, it's okay! It's me!" Yatsuhashi swooped forward and enveloped her in a hug, but she kicked out of it with a burst of adrenaline and bounced off the floor. He stopped, and held his hands out. "It's me. It's your Yatsu. Don't you recognize me?"

 

Velvet stared at his hands, tears in her eyes, for a good ten seconds before nodding weakly. He stepped forward and lifted her shaking form off the ground, then stepped out of the cottage. "You're safe now, you’ll be okay" he said, nodding towards the dissolving pile of himself and sincerely hoping she would be. She pressed into his chest, sobbing quietly, for the entire walk back to the dorms.

 

 


End file.
